kontra-
[ˈkɔntʁa]
The verdict
“kontra-” is uncommon German (outside the top frequency list), classed as a prefix. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency German
- 7
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - gegen, entgegengesetzt
Corpus desk
Index DE-kontra · kontra- · German
kontra- · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "K" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | kontra- |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Prefix |
| IPA | [ˈkɔntʁa] |
| Letters | 7 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Langschwanz-Rang von „kontra-“ im Deutschen
Rare enough to double-check
kontra- is uncommon German outside the top frequency list, classed as aprefix, transcribed [ˈkɔntʁa]. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for kontra-, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable German rules. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct German form is kontra-, spelled K-O-N-T-R-A--.
Definition
- 1gegen, entgegengesetzt
- 2eine Oktave [a] tiefer oder [b] höher
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how kontra- appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Wer kontraproduktiv agiert schadet der Sache.
[a] der Kontrabass und [b] der Kontratenor
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.